


a ghost with hollow eyes

by 23notecanon (epistaxiophilia)



Series: you broke time [3]
Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Gen, its motherly love hours boys, vanitas thinks about being good for five minutes but then tastes delicious evil
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-27
Updated: 2019-06-27
Packaged: 2020-05-20 12:53:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19377112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epistaxiophilia/pseuds/23notecanon
Summary: a rasping shadow appears in your room to offer you strength. if you were a normal 7-year-old, you'd piss your pants and crybut instead





	a ghost with hollow eyes

**Author's Note:**

> im never gonna stop writing about loving moms
> 
> everyone gets to share sora's mom

“Aw man, Riku, you always beat me!”

A young boy sits dejected and prone in the sand, a beach even, where the sky and ocean around them is ablaze with the setting sun’s red. Above him, his friend offers a hand up back to standing, a smile on his face, but the downed boy doesn’t take it, instead sighing exaggeratedly. He lays back with a puff of dust, tossing his wooden sword he grasped to the side, skittering away in the sand. “Don’t be like that, Sora,” his friend teases with hands on hips, “maybe if you practiced more instead of lounging around…”

“I practice lots!” Sora gripes, rolling around in frustration a moment before vaulting himself to his feet- or at least tries too, standing just to stumble directly into Riku.

Grabbing him before he falls back into the sand, “Whoa there! Not even fighting anymore and you’re still trying to take me out,” but he laughs, humoured by his friend's lack of balance.

“Whatever, I almost had you!” Reaching down, Sora snags his weapon from the ground, throwing a hand behind his head and walking off towards their boats. “One day I’ll getcha.”

A few paces behind him, Riku laughs, “yeah, sure you will.”

* * *

 

 “It’s not fair!” A sleepy, fussy boy complains to his mother, “if I just knew how to fight like he does…”

“Sora, you know I don’t like when you two playfight with those wooden swords!” Leaning down, she inspects bruises on his forearms, elbows, tsking her tongue, “just look at your arms!”

“Aww, mom, it doesn’t even hurt,” he tugs back an arm, stifling down as wince as it does, in fact, hurt.

“Why does it matter so much to you that you beat Riku, huh?”

“I want to be good at fighting!” He shrills, clenching fists. Staring up at her with bright, wide sapphire eyes, grinning eagerly, “if I can beat Riku, I can beat anyone!”

With a tired laugh, she scoops her young son up into her arms, toting him upstairs to bed, “and who is this ‘anyone’ you think you’re gonna be fighting, huh?”

“Uhhmm…” He hums, eyes drifting to the roof in thought, but he’s caught up by a yawn. It’s too late for him to be up, but he’d refused to come home when his father came to pick up the two young boys from playing on the other island. “Monsters!”

“Monsters?!” She exclaims jokingly, leaning back from him to give him an incredulous look, but still in her arms, “have you been seeing monsters, huh?”

“…No, but there could be! Riku always says he wants to protect people, but I want to be strong too!” Sora does not make himself easy to carry, arms flailing alongside his enthusiastic words, but his mother is more than used to this. Her boy can not be tamed.

Sighing softly, “Those are some big thoughts, little man.” Shifting into his room, she sets him onto his bed, pulling Sora’s shirt over his head with a mild fuss on his end, “maybe you should think more about your poor, worried mother and these bruised elbows, hmn?”

Tiredly, he peers down at his arms and the aforementioned discoloured welts, “I…” A yawn, “I just gotta get better at blocking….”

“Get better at staying out of trouble!” And with that, and a change into pjs, he crawls into bed, nestled under soft blankets. Tired and hiddenly hurt, but he's _eager._ Eager to one day beat his friend, no matter how much his mom worries. You don’t understand, mom! Acting like he’s some little kid… He can take care of himself…. He’s…. he’s sure he can…..

A hoarse voice creaks him from his sleep, well into the wee hours of the night. “You could be strong.” It awakes Sora with a start, a startled ‘huh’, eyes blinking open to the darkness of his room. It takes his eyes a long moment to adjust to the low lighting, but the filtered moonlight and a small nightlight in the corner, a dark cast figure makes itself apparent in the opposite corner on his room. How incredibly terrifying.

Swallowing roughly, “H-…hello?”

Again, it creaks at him, barely above a whisper, “You could be strong.”

“… I-,” the audacity of this shadow claiming his weakness, Sora stifles his feared response, “I am strong!”

“No you’re not. You’re weak, and bruised,” it hisses, “But you could be…. so strong…”

“And what would you know! Who are you, even…”

“I… I want you to be strong,” slowly, it approaches, crouching low to the floor, crawling on all fours to his bedside. "We could be strong, together.”

Blinking, Sora watches as it approaches, sputtering a ‘what are you doing’, before skittering deep under his blankets, hiding, “Go away!”

Warbling softly, “I just want to be strong.” This shadow sounds kind of… sad, really. Lonely even. It’s hard to be scared of something that sounds so sad.

Sora peeks out an eye from his blanket hiding, this black cast figure laying its torso prone on the edge of his bed and face down. “… I want to be strong, too.”

Muffled, “I could teach you.”

“You don’t look very strong.”

“I once was. But I’ve lost something you have. You could be strong, with it, though.”

“I… have something of yours?”

“No… maybe. I don’t know…”

“I’ll… I can give it back, if you need it-“ And man, does he ever look like he needs whatever this is, laying there barely existent and limp over the side of his bed, rasping into the sheets.

Interrupting him, though. “You can’t give it back. You can only use it.”

“… And if I used it, I would be stronger.”

“Yes. If you knew how to use it.”

“… teach me!”

Slowly, the figure props himself up on his arms, weakly craning his neck to look to the small boy- or he would have, but the sunken slots in pallid skin where eyes might have been are instead a black, hollow vacancy that stares at nothing, shining back the moonlight from the window nearby and setting Sora’s fear ablaze in his heart once more.  “Alright-“ but in a single heartbeat that pounds in the young boy's ears, the figure blips out of existence, leaving him shaking there under his blankets. Was he dreaming? A nightmare? He feels awake- but how could that ever be anything but a horrible, awful dream? A manifestation of his desire to beat his friend, to be strong- maybe he’d start listening to his mother more, maybe relax a little bit. Slowly, he lays back down, still crowded under his blanket, staring up at the roof in shaking remorse to the wild imaginings of his mind.

* * *

 

Unfortunately, though, it was no nightmare. Or, it sort of was; an errant soul wandering in search of itself, Vanitas’ feels, but does not comprehend those strings of fate that bind him to this child. Barely cognizant of his own dwindling existence, he finds himself close to any remnant of his life that remains; though he is unaware what exactly of Sora draws him, or even that he’s been drawn to anything at all.

The next time he shows up in Sora’s bedroom some days later, the young boy tries to be ready for it. He knows it was ‘probably’ just a bad dream, but as he wakes up to waddle to the bathroom, he jolts into full consciousness as his shadow friend lingers again in the corner.

“… Are you real?” He questions, squeezing his arms around his chest as he approaches the leaning figure standing there.

He does not immediately respond, a rasping noise in his throat as he creaks his consciousness to life. “.. I don’t know.”

Swallowing roughly, Sora walks right up to him, face to face with his thighs before looking up to his face. The figure looks down at him with those still blackened eyes- and Sora looks up, frowning deeply as he reaches out a hand and… Meets with the squish of muscle beneath cloth and skin. He feels very cold, but definitely physical. “… I could still be dreaming….”

“You could.”

There’s a pang of sadness for this strange and vaguely corporeal ghost that haunts him- but Sora remembers why the shadow had shown up in the first place, pulling back his hand into a fist. “You said you could help me be strong.”

“I could tell you how to use your strength better.”

“So like… training?” An eager lilt to his little voice, he tries to shake off the sleep he was holding onto earlier. It’s not too hard, because he’s still somewhat terrified.

“Yes.”

Clenching both fists and pumping them to either side of his head, Sora all but stifles his reactional fear, “I wanna do it!”… but then a thought, “I have to pee first.”

A low, rasping laugh, “Alright.”

It’s hard to grasp the attention of a 7-year-old boy, but Vanitas finds himself oddly endlessly patient, kneeling and leaning over from behind him with wooden sword in hand. Grasped onto his smaller forearm, “You block up like this, not downward. Hold it up higher,” humming close to his ear. It creeps up Sora’s spine each time his shadow rumbles like that, but he’s trying hard to get used to it- because the help he’s offering is definitely valuable information, even though he’s not entirely sure how he’ll use it yet. Committing it to memory, though, so that tomorrow he can challenge Riku to a fight, and maybe, just maybe, he’ll get a leg up on him for once.

“Uhhhggg- this is a lot to remember,” he gripes about it anyways, holding his sword with both hands and swinging it ineffectually about in front of him.

“I’ll come back again. You don’t have to know it all at once… probably, at least.”

“But I want to win now!”

“You can’t. You have to get there.”

Rolling his head back, Sora grooooans- not to mention it’s quite late into the night now, and he’s absolutely tired. “I’m gonna be too tired to fight him tomorrow anyways…” Though he’s sure he’ll still try. “How come you only come at night?”

Reaching a hand forward, he offers Sora a look at his black-cast form, “Am I not your shadow? I would drown in the light of day.”

“I dunno… you’re kinda big to be my shadow, even if you…. kinda look it…” Even with his child-brain. Sora knows that the shadow looks a lot like him, but well.. older. And darker. And dead-er.

“You stand very close to light,” peering over at the moonlight shining in from the window, “perhaps it skews your shadow further than you think.”

“… skews?”

“Stretches. Like when you stand in the sunset, or, perhaps the moonlight,” he gestures to the moon framed in his window to grasp the child’s attention.

Looking down at the ground, Sora sees his actual shadow, stretched across his bedroom floor and up the wall. “.. Huh, yeah, I guess you’re right. It is a lot bigger than me.” He neglects to question the fact his actual shadow is obviously there on the floor, and not a strange ghost kneeling behind him. “Do you really think you’re my shadow?”

“I don’t know what I am….” He sounds tired, more tired than he’d been all night. Maybe it’s too late for him to be out, too.

“So… you’ll come back again later?” Sora warbles, inclined to get to bed himself.

“I might. I guess I can’t promise anything.”

“Well, alright! I’ll try to remember everything you told me tonight just in case.”

“Yes…” Vanitas rumbles, setting his face down on Sora’s shoulder for a moment- he peeps in confusion, but before he can turn around to question it, the ghost is gone.

“… Uh, good night!” Even if he’s not sure he’ll hear it. Sora never even remembered to ask him his name, but with how spacey he seems to be, he’s not sure he’ll even know the answer. Maybe he really is just his shadow, come to life to help him train to beat Riku in a fight.

* * *

Sora doesn’t win against Riku the next morning- he’s too tired, like he said. His friend _does_ notice, however, how Sora seems a bit more on the ball, at least, but when he tries to ask him about it, Sora lies and says it’s just his own strength. No reason to tell him about the shadow- what if Riku wanted him to share! What if he tried to share, and his shadow took offense? What if the shadow really is a figment of his imagination, and he’s just going crazy after losing so many times. No no no- no one will know about his new friend unless he specifically asked to be noticed.

The next night, Sora is dead unconscious by the time Vanitas blips back into existence, and when the child doesn’t rise to any errant shadows lingering in the corner of his room, he opts to not wake him. Instead, he hovers outside his doorway, in the shadowed hallway, a light filtering in from the basement below. Voices down there, too, a quiet argument; Vanitas barely notices, glancing down the stairs with his hollow eyes. He forgets people even exist when he doesn’t specifically see them, his mind empty. Should he avoid them? It’s not as if they could do anything about him. Should he care if he’s a bother?

There’s footsteps heading towards him, but he’s rooted to the ground, grasping to existence.

“Well, I’m about ready not to let him go out at all if he keeps th-AUGH-“ Because Sora’s mother catches the sight of a figure standing in front of her son's room. She freezes, blinking rapidly to see if she can’t get the specter out of her vision; slowly his hollow gaze moves from where it was staring at the bottom of the stairs, following the path she’d just walked, before meeting up with his eyes. Oh god, where are his eyes. “… Hello…?” In turn, he blinks a few times at her as well, curious, but as she swallows her nerves, one more blink, and it is suddenly no longer there.

Rushing up the stairs, a father stares up at her from halfway up, “What, what ‘s wrong, did you trip?”

She doesn’t know how to answer him, though, because of course, it’s no longer there. “N-no… I… I just thought, I saw…something.”

“…something??”

Sighing, she fans herself down with a hand as her adrenaline wears down, “I think I’ve been working too hard today, it was hot. I just, the shadows up here caught my eyes funny, thought I saw a shadow standing in front of Sora’s door…”

“Oh, shoot, well,” he can’t help but laugh, heading back downstairs, “You go head to bed, alright? I’ll finish up down here.”

Nodding, she walks down the hall, stopping at her son’s room. Sticking her head in for a peek, there he is, tucked up and asleep, and thankfully, alone. Closing the door again, she stands there for a long moment regarding her thoughts. There was no way it was just a shadow- it stood there for a good ten seconds, even as she blinked. Looked up at her with its dead eyes. A ghost. Haunting her house- or even worse, haunting her boy. Great.

* * *

 

Weeks pass as his nameless ghost appears sporadically at night, teaching Sora new techniques and skills, slowly advising him to become the little monster murdering machine he wants to be. Finally, one night, Sora eagerly sits up in his bed, eyes squinted shut(because the ghost never comes when he can be seen), waiting for him to arrive. Hoping this wouldn’t be a night he skips.

“What has you so excited,” he hums curiously from his corner, and Sora is up like a bat out of hell, skittering over to him.

“I did it! I beat Riku! Tripped him over his own legs with that one move,” he pumps his fists into the air, punching around while still avoiding punching his shadow. “Didn’t know what hit him!” Suddenly aware how loud he’s being, Sora slaps his hands over his mouth.

That prompts a curious tilt of Vanitas’ head, peering too the doorway for sounds of movement. Before, Sora's excitable nature and eager taking to training has alerted the woman of the house. Vanitas doesn’t understand why it’s important not to alert her, but he respects the rules Sora gives regardless. When nothing comes, he looks back to Sora, “Oh good, good. I told you; you would be strong. You can only get stronger. You will defeat your enemies.”

Nodding his head enthusiastically- but then, the word registers, “Uhwuh- enemies…” A frown goes over his face. “I don’t want Riku to be my enemy.”

Vanitas doesn’t understand that either- Sora’s done nothing but complain of this other boy constantly beating him in fights. “But you want to defeat him.”

“That doesn’t mean I hate him.”

“… It should?”

“No way! Me and Riku are best buds! We both want to protect everyone!” Vanitas blinks slowly, completely confused, and Sora grabs him by an arm, tugging him towards the open window, “here, come on, I’ll show you! Can you… go for walks?”

Shrugging, “I don’t see why not.”

Now, Sora has always dreamt about crawling out his window in the middle of the night to go on a _~secret adventure~,_ but with Vanitas now, he could help him down from the second story. It’d be easy, he’s sure, just hop on down onto the vestibule, crawl down the trellis… Vanitas watches as Sora takes the mental time to parse through his plan, but also sees how nervous he is, and decides to do him a favour. Tucking Sora beneath an arm, the young boy peeps his confusion, and then slams his hands over his mouth to stifle the scream when Vanitas just.. jumps out the window! To the ground! To his credit, the shadow lands perfectly on his feet, setting Sora back down on the ground where he stands there with his hands still over his mouth. Muffled, “Your legs!”

Looking down, he stands up barely on one leg to inspect the other, “What… what about my legs.”

“How did you jump so far without hurting your legs!”

“Uhh… magic? You will one day be able to fall from heights too.”

“…Really? How are you supposed to learn that?”

“I broke my legs until I learned how to prevent this.”

Squealing between his fingers, “You BROKE YOUR LEGS?-“ realizing how loud he’s being, Sora quietly repeats, whispering loudly, “You broke your leeeeegs? I don’t want to break my legs!”

Again, Vanitas shrugs. “Maybe you don’t have to? Come on- before your woman wakes up.”

“I told you before, she’s my MOM, not a woman,” but he knows that’s an unwinnable battle, so he starts the somewhat long walk towards the beach, and the boats there. Technically stealing his father’s boat, it’s fun to watch his shadow get a bit… leery, around the water, standing up instead of sitting. Sora is about to scold him for not helping, when outstretched hands cast magic, a dark aero, pushing their vessel towards their assumed destination. “… Wow! How are you doing that,” he peers over the side of the boat, keeping low as to not fall with the new velocity.

“Magic.”

“Are you gonna say everything is magic!”

“… I mean, this time it really is magic.”

“… can I use magic?”

“Maybe one day. A wizard would have to teach you.”

“A WIzARD? Did a wizard teach you!”

…squinting. “…maybe.”

With Vanitas’ magic, it doesn’t take too long to get there, Sora jumping off his boat and running off towards nearby caves, while Vanitas follows slowly behind. Looking over the unfamiliar sights. He feels something about this place, an ominous darkness, rumbling. Something to rival, even overpower his own darkness. When he catches up to his child friend, Sora has snuck beneath a wrapping of vines, crawled into a crowded cave, and it is dark. “I did not think this over.” Once again, Vanitas to the rescue, and his hand alights with dark fire, just barely lighting the cave so he's not immediately tripping all over everything.

Vanitas' vision is greeted to the sight of a cavern covered in drawings. He peers around at them all, despite is visibly non-existent eyes. Better in the dark than Sora, he seems them all clearly, along with a door across the room. “…so?”

“So! So- this is me and my friend's secret place, you know,” Sora huffs, “and it shows off how we’re best buds!”

“You drew these all together?”

“Yeah!”

“Then why do you fight?”

“… uhh… Hmn. Maybe it’s like a game, I guess?”

“Knowing you’re taking my training and using it to fight someone you care about it strange. I fight to kill, Sora. You could seriously hurt someone.”

Again, a dark presence lingers in the corner of Vanitas mind, and while Sora makes himself occupied fumbling around with chalk in the darkness, adding a scrawling of his Riku defeat, “Aw, no, I know, but I just, don't fight as hard, right?”

“Riiiight,” Vanitas hums, looking around until he spots it, a crowded figure behind a large, knotted tree root, darts of amber eyes staring up at him. “… Sora," he speaks darkly, "… Does anyone else know about this place?”

“Huh?” Looking up, he follows Vanitas gaze, but the way the other shadow is facing, all Sora sees is the natural shadows. “Just me and Riku! Though, there’s a new girl in town… we might invite her down one day. But no one else!”

“Huh.” There’s something dreadfully familiar about this other shadow, but it isn’t speaking, just lingering. Looking around again, Vanitas spots the door on the far wall. “Does that door open?”

“Nope! I think it’s just a fake, someone forever ago put it there. So I guess that means someone, some time was down here. But not anymore.”

“Hmmmn...” Again, he looks to the other shadow, and it slowly blinks. “Something here is looking for the heart of your world.” Vanitas speaks from weird, etched instinct, and not cognizant thought.

That perks Sora away from his drawing, and he turns around, looking around wildly, “What, where! I don’t see anything- it’s too dark.”

“A shadow. There, behind the tree roots.” Vanitas can see in the dark adeptly, but with the meager light his dark-fira provides in his palm, Sora sees nothing.

However, a deep voice _rasps_ back, “Like you can talk of shadow.”

Sora SQUEELS, jumping to his feet and hiding behind his familiar shadow, “NO ONE IS SUPPOSED TO BE IN HERE.”

“I will leave you be, young ones," the other darkness rumbles, eyes shutting to leave his form unseeable.

Having significant trouble remembering any mote of his past, Vanitas takes this familiarity in his mind seriously, “Why do I know you.”

“You don’t,” it rumbles back, sinking beneath the roots and, somehow, into the wall of the cavern. “Go back to sleep, half-shadow.” His ears ringing from the change in pressure, the weakened ghost immediately folds to the power of this other creature lingering in this world, blasting him out of existence.

When Sora wakes up the next morning, the night's adventures feels even more than usual like a bad dream- because he has no idea how he’s managed to get back home, tucked into bed as if nothing had happened. Also, since it’s morning, he has no way to ask his ghost what happened- not that Vanitas would have an answer for him. When he heads back to the secret place with Riku, though, there’s the picture he definitely started scrawling last night- and a blackened handprint scrapping out the image of his shadow cast across the floor. That’s going to be fun to hide later, because he’s not going to explain to Riku what that’s all about.

* * *

 

His shadow doesn’t return again for three weeks, so long that Sora doesn’t think he’s ever coming back. When he does, it isn’t even to Sora’s presence; again Vanitas stands at his doorway, hunched over and gurgling uncomfortably. That other entity may try to scrub away his existence like a stain on the ground, but Vanitas is bound here, his sheer will unbeatable. He’s injured now, however, so he’s not willing, or even able to explain himself to the young boy. Not until he finds more to grasp his existence onto. What is he clinging to now?

Words from the barely lit basement, harsh and whispered, an argument. Nothing too serious, but something a couple might do at night while their son is tucked into bed. The annoyance rises a shiver down his spine, and from old instinct, Vanitas finds himself weightlessly stepping down the stairs without a creak. Peering around the corner and into the kitchen, if he had the mind for it, he’d think it takes them far too long to realize he’s there- and at first, even,  “I swear, he was gone when I looked, and back by the time you did. I d- Oh, Sora honey, go back to- aaaHHHHH-“ the shrill shout when she realizes it’s that same god damn shadow from a few weeks ago. In fact, since then, she’s seen him often, blipping around her house in the night for such short visits, not even Vanitas recalled he was having them. “I TOLD YOU!” she points at him violently, expecting him to disappear before her husband can look around; but sure enough, he stays, and the father catches the gaze of two solid black orbs in the shadow of the kitchen hallway.

Sputtering, “I- what, I don’t, _what is that.”_ He grasps the back of a table chair, positioning it between himself and the ghost in his doorway.

“I don’t know!” She whispers back hoarsely, slowly approaching the shadow. “I keep seeing it in front of Sora’s room! It’s stalking him!”

He opens his mouth to retort that, but what spills out is ominous gurgling, creaking out his throat as the air he holds simply escapes him. As if the air was the only thing holding up his posture as well, Vanitas folds, body failing him, until he’s curled up face first on the floor. “… W-…what…" The father whines, reaching to grab his wife before she can go get herself killed, but she can not be contained. The ghost couldn't look over the age of 15.

“… oh no!” The mother tiptoes over, looking down at the pitiful shadow, “… did I kill it?”

“.. by yelling at it?!”

“I don’t know!” More pitiful sounds, and he manages to right himself onto his elbows, but not much more. Maybe reaching out a hand to grasp at the mother’s legs- which she pulls back in fear for at first, but then can’t help but feel more pity than she does fear. Leaning down to rub a hand over his back, his body definitely physical, but infinitely cold to the touch. “You’re what’s getting my boy all riled up, aren’t cha.”

“Ah…es…” He nods, weakly.

“Oh yeah? Why’s that?”

“Need… r…eady…” Even moreso now, apparently. Because there’s another shadow on his island, and it isn’t playing very friendly.

Despite being in physical contact with him, she blinks, and the shadow is gone. But, now her husband has seen it, so she feels significantly less insane.

* * *

 

As time goes on, he appears more frequently for both of them, once again haunting Sora at night to offer him fighting advice, and occasionally haunting his mother after she has what she would call, ‘bad days’. A strange connection, but it doesn’t really make the day any worse than it was; just that if she drops something expensive, or she doesn’t manage to buy her bread on time before the fresh ones are gone, or if she’s having a spat with her husband, she can expect the ghost to show up in her kitchen to warble nonsensically at her. She offers him food or drink, but while he never takes them, he always seems to… _appreciate,_ the offer.

One night, Sora seems legitimately scared to his arrival. “What’s that all about?” Vanitas rumbles, hovering over him as he hides beneath his blanket.

“Uwuhhh… something keeps showing up at night!”

“Other than me..?” He thinks of that other shadow, hackles rising. It seemed as if it was bound to that ‘secret place’ with the door of this world, but if it was starting to travel…

“Other than you… It keeps scaring me on purpose! And crawling back into my closet before I can fight back…” Looking around his bed, Vanitas spots Sora has even prepared himself with his little wooden sword under the covers. “I try to stay up and wait for it, but it always seems to know when I’m asleep.”

“Hmnn…” His blackened eyes fall to the closet door, slightly ajar. “Sleep, then. You are _my_ child to torment,” he rumbles.

“Uhg, you don’t try to scare me. I mean, sometimes you do anyway, but,” he pouts, creeping out from behind the covers. “I don’t want you to have to protect me!”

“If they’re not fighting fair. Then we don’t need to fight back fairly.”

“… I guess not, no.”

“Not even letting you fight back,” he rasps, slinking back to his corner. “Go to sleep, Sora.” He doesn’t think it’s the other shadow now, because it didn’t seem like the kind to fight unfairly. Whatever comes from his closet now, though, it’s in for some trouble.

Still slightly ajar, once Sora is quietly snoring, the door creaks itself shut. Curious, Vanitas thinks, and sinks into his corner, completely out of sight. It doesn’t come immediately, waiting patiently for its moment, but again, the door creeeeeaks open, and from within it, a long, clawed hand creeps out from the doorframe, and then another, and then another, pulling itself into the moonlight. Vanitas waits- he wants to make sure it has no way to return to where it comes from, because he’s going to absolutely beat the shit out it, if he doesn’t just outright kill it. Then again- if he lets it squirrel back to its world, injured, it will warn the others of its kind to never return.

A monster. A legit, no holds monster. With four long, ugly limbs, body covered in orange fur and horns; it creeps silently across Sora’s bedroom floor, unwilling to jostle the young boy from his sleep until it was absolutely necessary. This one had spunk, the fear needed to be earned from him. Its head perks backward when its creeping is interrupted by the sound of the closet door shutting behind it, however, and it’s greeted with the sight of a human- or maybe not, since it appears to be eyeless, staring back at the monster. Immediately going into panic mode, the monster rapidly crawls its ass back to the door, scrambling for the doorknob, but Vanitas throws out a punch, cracking into its long nose, breaking teeth. It shrieks in pain, unexpecting the attack, but also to the fact it’s been _touched_ by a _human-_ Sora shoots up from his sleep with his own yelp, confused from his awakening, but catching on quick. Grabbing his sword, he leaps over the edge of his bed and directly onto the monster, no fear between himself and Vanitas, and the two of them just start wailing on the poor thing. Not to death, Vanitas must remind himself, and after a sufficient amount of given bruises and time, he reaches back to open the door himself, calling off, “Sora, off! Let him go, he can crawl back to his kind and warn them of you.” At first, he’s not exactly eager to let the monster whose been tormenting him go, but Sora does hop off the crying creature. Spotting that open door, and hearing Vanitas’ warning, it desperately skitters for the open closet, hoping that his partner has left the doorway open despite being very, very much human contaminated. To his luck, the closet transports him back to his own world to be immediately shaved and boiled despite having already received his massive beating. From beyond that doorway gate, alarms sound, code 2319, everyone on guard.... 

But, in the commontion, no one remembers the shut the door behind him. Sora and Vanitas peer curiously into the… well, not his closet. “Sora.”

Quietly, “…yeah buddy?”

“I’m going to go in there, and I may not come back.” Something is drawing him in, like a moth to flame. Unignorable.

“…aw… But…”

“You’ve learned all you’ll learn from me. You are strong. Remember that. Hold it tightly in your heart, and remind it often. You, are strong. You’ll forget me, in time. And no one will ever come through your closet to bother you again.

Frowning, tears well in his eyes, but he nods furiously, hoping that maybe his shadow would come to visit again later. But alas. As he steps through the doorway, transporting to another world… Vanitas is filled so suddenly with energy, his forgotten memories returning to him, just for a moment.

 Around him, other monsters scurry around erratically- “WHO DIDN’T SHUT THE DOOR- THE HUMAN, THE HUMAN CAME THROUGH!” Someone is pointing at him now, but he doesn’t really care. This world- fated! The world is perfect for him. Pain, and anguish, and torment, all locked and stored in one place. Turning to face the door behind him, he gives Sora one last nod, before his keyblade summons to his palm, and it closes at the insistence of the blade. A keyhole forms across its surface, locking it indefinitely- “Sleep well, Sora. When I see you again, you'll be fit to fight me.”

And sleep well, me, he thinks, because while he surges with energy from the panic that occurs around him, he knows well that the time is now for storage, not for wasting. Blipping out of existence once more, he finds a nice, quiet place to lodge his body into, and awaits for his heart to reform from this beautiful, beautiful torment.


End file.
